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Tech News
OpenAI has reduced its fundraising target from a previously reported $30 billion to $20 billion, according to the Financial Times. The round is reportedly being led by UAE-based investors, with a possible retail offering for wealthy individuals to help reach the goal. The Wall Street Journal added that OpenAI has secured $11 billion so far, with some large investors reportedly showing a 'tepid' response.
OpenAI is reportedly negotiating a private funding round of up to $30 billion at a $1.25 trillion pre-money valuation, led by Coatue and UAE investors, according to CNBC sources. The deal may also include arrangements for OpenAI to secure additional computing capacity from the UAE. OpenAI declined to comment, and terms could still change.
OpenAI is finalizing a funding round of up to $30 billion that would value the company at $1.25 trillion, excluding the new capital, according to people familiar with the matter. UAE-based investors and Coatue are leading the round, which is being described as a bridge financing ahead of a possible IPO, with signatures targeted by the end of next week.
The UAE is moving ahead with its April Cabinet plan to shift 50% of federal government services, sectors, and operations to autonomous AI agents within two years. Minister of State for AI Omar Sultan Al Olama said the country has built a 'control tower agent' and runs continuous audits, combining both AI-based and human review, to oversee how these agents act. He made the remarks at the WEF's Annual Meeting of Global Future Leaders in Dubai on October 14.
Women who run or appear prominently on social media platforms, including Mariam, administrator of a 400,000-member Facebook group for women in the UAE, report receiving a surge of unsolicited messages from men policing their dress, behavior and visibility online. These messages, often framed in religious terms, range from demands to cover up to outright sexual harassment, prompting some women to disable messaging features entirely. The pattern is linked to a subset of the broader online 'manosphere' that recasts antifeminist, male-grievance ideology in Islamic religious language.
The UAE announced the completion of its first domestically designed space probe on October 1, which will be integrated with the MBR Explorer spacecraft at the University of Colorado Boulder. Scheduled for launch in March 2028, the mission aims to study six asteroids, Venus, and Mars, with a focus on the asteroid Justicia, believed to contain ancient materials from the outer Solar System. This marks the UAE's second interplanetary project after the Hope Mars orbiter.
Threat intelligence firm Positive Technologies found that the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Iran accounted for about 67% of Middle East cyberattacks detected via open-source monitoring of Dark Web forums and Telegram channels. Check Point Software Technologies data cited separately shows organizations in the UAE and Saudi Arabia faced roughly 2,700 attacks per week over the past six months, versus a global average of about 2,300.
Napster, now owned by AI/VR firm Infinite Reality, has partnered with GEMS Education in the UAE to create AI-generated avatars of teachers that answer student questions around the clock in multiple languages. The system will run on Napster Learn and a wearable device called Napster View, with a rollout planned across GEMS Middle East schools by the end of 2026.
Amazon Web Services has confirmed that customer data hosted in its Bahrain and United Arab Emirates data centers was permanently lost following Iranian drone strikes in March. The damage wiped out data across all three availability zones in Bahrain and one of three zones in the UAE, with AWS saying the destruction exceeded what its systems were built to survive. Amazon had already halted billing in the affected regions and spent six months trying to restore services before disclosing the losses.
Amazon Web Services disclosed on September 15 that drone strikes attributed to Iran destroyed data center infrastructure in the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain so severely that customer data and resources could not be recovered. AWS said the damage crossed multiple availability zones, exceeding the redundancy built into its regional and multi-zone systems, following earlier strikes in March and April that had already caused structural, power and fire-related damage.
Amazon Web Services facilities in the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain remain out of service months after being struck during the recent Iran conflict, according to reports. The prolonged outage is raising questions about the resilience of Gulf infrastructure underpinning the region's AI ambitions.